Purpose: This research aims to empirically investigate the motivation of corporate voluntary disclosure by exploring the impact of historical loss on corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD). Research design, data, and methodology: This paper takes Chinese A-share listed firms that issued standalone social responsibility reports during the period of 2009-2017 as a sample. Drawing on extant literature, this paper defines historical loss firms as firms with net profit greater than or equal to 0 and undistributed profit less than 0. The tendency score matching method (PSM) is used to find matching samples for historical loss firms. Then OLS regression is conducted to investigate the relationship between historical loss and corporate social disclosure. Results: The results show that historical loss has a significant positive impact on the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosure. After changing the measurement of independent and dependent variables as well as adopting different matching methods to screen the control group, the results still hold. Further research indicates that the relationship between historical loss and CSRD is influenced by corporate financing constraints and industry competition. Conclusions: This research supports the resource motivation hypothesis of corporate social responsibility disclosure, and provides empirical evidence for regulators to strengthen supervision on corporate disclosure.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and investment-cash flow sensitivity, which is a surrogate for financing constraints. Research design, data, and methodology – Taking China’s A-share listed companies between 2009 and 2016 as a sample, this paper empirically tests the relationship between CSRD and investment-cash flow sensitivity by Panel VAR model. By introducing the orthogonal impulse response function, this paper distinguishes the fundamental factors and financial ones that affect corporate investment behavior. Results – Findings indicate that: (1) investment-cash flow sensitivity of firms with low level of CSRD is significantly lower than that of firms with high level of CSRD; (2) the orthogonal impulse response of corporate investment to cash flow in firms with high level of CSRD is significantly different from zero, but it is not significant in firms with low level of CSRD; (3) for firms with low level of CSRD, 0.7% of corporate investment volatility can be explained by the change in cash flow, which is lower than that of firms with high level of CSRD (1.1%). Conclusions - Corporations disclosing more and higher quality CSRD are often those faced with financing constraints. Voluntary disclosure can help them alleviate information asymmetry and financing constraints.